Origins of Bent Tree

Session 1

Thaddeus Agrippa Traptomb

13

FEB/13

It’s been over a week since that artificer left for Ovid, and I was beginning to think it was a mistake to follow Gwudd out to Sentry. The Gripplis are certainly a likable people, and Nogu seems to be enjoying their company, but I thought that there would be a lot more adventure than this.

But today, we finally got something of interest. Jinko, (the bartender from Canterbury Tan), tipped Nogu off to a new group of adventurers in town. Hoto was able to get to gain their confidence, but only enough to find out that they had a map to an ork traptomb. Leave it to Gwudd to get them into a card game, that Svirfneblin has either the best luck, best skill, or best combination of the two I have ever seen. It was enough to have us get a look at the map, and I was able to see it long enough to do a decent replication. After checking with Claudio Gungan (the local blacksmith), we confirmed that their really was a traptomb to the east and we departed. We figured it would take us at most a day or two to explore it. After four months of nothing in Sentry, it shouldn’t be a big deal to take a little vacation of sorts.

Halfway through the salt flats, we ran into two gripplis carrying a roasted deer. Plucky pair they were, insisted we pay them a fare to get through. One of them even threatened us with a light crossbow. It took Hoto spelling it out clearly for them to turn and run. They left the deer, but not the crossbow. Too bad, from the looks of it, we don’t have one of that type. Perhaps we’ll spot them again on the way back to Sentry.

We found the entrance to the traptomb at about dawn. A simple tap from Koro’s sword opened it up, and in we went. It was with great regret on my part that we were forced to leave Bernard (the dragon that owns Koro) behind. He just simply wouldn’t fit in the tunnel we were faced with. And as it turned out, his flight would have been quite useful over the many pits we faced.

This Thaddeus Agrippa that was entombed here must have had a thing for hornets, because we were often faced with swarms of them, and even a few of what I assume were dire hornets. Nasty things. The place lived up to its name, and there was quite a few traps we had to work our way through. Nogu definitely got the worst end of the deal. He was tricked into diving into a pool of acid, had acid splashed on his face from a trapped chest, got his hands impaled on barbs, and fell in a pit of snakes. I won’t go into all the details, but there is certainly truth in what is said about ork traptombs. They’re “a terrible time that leads to a lot of money.” All in all, we did pretty well for ourselves. Most notably, we all came away with very interesting gold statues of Mr. Agrippa himself.

It figures, the one time when that blasted ork artificer would have been useful, he’s gone. We can only hope that nothing has happened since we have been gone in Sentry.